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U.S. physicists rally around plan to build fusion power plant

sciencemag.org

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Re: U.S. physicists rally around plan to build fusion power plant

#221

Post by lifeisstillgood »

ashtonkem wrote: post #166
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> b) my view is skewed by HN. Making us anti-fake news?? :-) However I also have the same impression, and HN is one of my leading indicators so it could well be coalescing.

Why would HN be the indicator? I’m sure we all personally enjoy the ego boost of participating in such a “smart” forum, but let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here; the primary speciality that HN caters to are software engineers and startup people (usually both). There’s no particular reason to believe that HN would be a reliable indicator for such heady topics as fusion power other than “a bunch of curious nerds c…

“a bunch of curious nerds comment there” beats well over 80% of new sources. Of course the Fusion Power discussion board that still uses PHP4 powered text boxes will be way better.

Of course we must be aware of our "me,me,me" tendencies, its a good warning.

Re: U.S. physicists rally around plan to build fusion power plant

#222

Post by ashtonkem »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #221
ashtonkem wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would HN be the indicator? I’m sure we all personally enjoy the ego boost of participating in such a “smart” forum, but let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here; the primary speciality that HN caters to are software engineers and startup people (usually both). There’s no particular reason to believe that HN would be a reliable indicator for such heady topics as fusion power other than “a bunch of curious nerds c…

“a bunch of curious nerds comment there” beats well over 80% of new sources. Of course the Fusion Power discussion board that still uses PHP4 powered text boxes will be way better. Of course we must be aware of our "me,me,me" tendencies, its a good warning.

“Beating 80% of other news sources” is completely orthogonal to being right. HN could indeed beat out 80% of the alternatives and still be brutally wrong.

And that’s long before we discuss the tendency of specialists to over-extend into other fields with predictably bad results.

Re: U.S. physicists rally around plan to build fusion power plant

#223

Post by SiempreViernes »

free_rms wrote: post #193
SiempreViernes wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its amazing how cutting emission by regulation is completely left out of the list of options, somehow spending infinite money is seen as easier than getting congress to act... Anyway, I let Wellerstein reply to this: """The Manhattan Project was an unusual, somewhat dubious enterprise that had massive, world-affecting consequences. Ignoring that not only misunderstands the Manhattan Project, it misunderstands what ha…

Cutting emissions by regulation is a continually losing battle. You can't tell people to live a lower-quality life and expect to win elections, and you'll have the combined lobbyists of a lot of different interests against you. It's actually more tractable to invent fusion than to try and win that battle long-term -- at least it's theoretically possible to make fusion work. And heck, if we could put some $ in pockets…

The established solution is you don't tell them right out, you just make it worse for most while ensuring there are a few success stories to distract with. See for instance: war on drugs, war on terror et. al.

Re: U.S. physicists rally around plan to build fusion power plant

#224

Post by Hasz »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #51
Hasz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is giving you numbers for why this is wrong, so let me ballpark. Typical solar irradiance is 1000W/m^2. Mean sunshine hours where I live is 3000hrs/y. Assuming 100% efficiency, 100% solar irradiance, perfect angle etc for those 3000hours, we get ~10^10J of energy. Those are bad assumptions, but very generous. In a gram of deuterium, per e=mc^2, we get ~10^12J. There is 100x more energy in a single gram of dete…

If energy density were proportional to cost, nuclear fission would already be dominating by a factor of 2,000,000x over fracked gas and coal. The reality is that complexities of systems needed in energy conversions end up coming into play. Getting net energy out of fusion was done in the 1950s (explosively, but still). Even given sustained controlled fusion, you still have to build a power plant around it and 'break…

The comment is mostly about energy scales -- Getting into the actual conversion rate, system efficiency, amortization etc is beyond the scope of a comment, especially when it's still an area of very active research.

Re: U.S. physicists rally around plan to build fusion power plant

#225

Post by ncmncm »

pfdietz wrote: post #217
lambdatronics wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There has never, at any time, been any reasonable expectation of getting practical, commercial power from magnetic-confinement hot-neutron fusion. Not true. The existence of privately-funded fusion efforts implies that some people think there is a reasonable expectation, and are willing to put money behind it. This costing study suggests that $2-6/W could be achievable for some fusion concepts[0]. Using some rough c…

> Not true. The existence of privately-funded fusion efforts implies that some people think there is a reasonable expectation Examine some of those efforts in detail and you will realize utterly bonkers nonsense can still get funding. One well known effort was told 20 years ago their scheme didn't work, but wishful thinking springs eternal.

Yes, government-subsidized hype is a fantastic generator of venture capital money, which just like gov't funding never needs to produce any ROI.

VC fusion seems relatively harmless, vs public subsidy, but each one is siphoning money away from projects that could actually work, particularly battery improvements, solar electrolysis catalysts, ammonia synthesis, and other renewables support.

Re: U.S. physicists rally around plan to build fusion power plant

#226

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

Lammy wrote: post #218
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People love to post comments like this on every thread where nuclear comes up, but it really distorts the reality of the situation. Investment in nuclear has essentially evaporated. This is because fission plants take billions of dollars and around a decade to stand up. If you go through the numbers the ROI looks pretty ugly. Meanwhile you can look at the trend over time in levelized energy costs and storage costs, a…

> Even if you waved a magic wand and eliminated any form of political opposition, that doesn't change this less than favorable cost picture. The cost is the manifestation of the political opposition.

No, it is not. It's intrinsic to the technology. You see the exact same unpleasant numbers in entirely state funded fission, including everything China is currently building. CCP certainly isn't paying the same costs out of "politics."

I want to be clear: I'm generally pro nuclear. I'm just exhausted by the smug "scared idiots and politics ruins fission" when the situation is considerably more complex.

Re: U.S. physicists rally around plan to build fusion power plant

#227

Post by pontifier »

jl6 wrote: post #215
pontifier wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had several mentors and advisors and am doing everything I can to be inclusive without giving away equity. There was a legal entity created, and I have applied for several grants. Each time, I have put together a team or had lined up collaborators who could help if the grant had been awarded. I'm working with suppliers, and discussing the concept openly with everyone who is interested. Most of the time however,…

Are you trying to start a business or do scientific research? I think you’ll struggle to get investors interested in an idea that hasn’t been validated, and you’ll struggle to get academics interested in helping a money-making venture. You might need to make a tough call to do one or the other.

I'm not sure I really understand.

The research is obviously the most important thing at this point. Without validation it's all just conjecture.

I know I'll need solid evidence to back up the idea, but I've reached the end of my ability to evaluate the concept. I can't find a fatal flaw, and that's why I keep trying.

I'm really looking for an answer either way. I need help to prove it will work, or to show it's a dead end.

While it's in limbo I can't, in good conscience, drop it.

Do you really think having a patent and an LLC to organize under are fatal flaws?

Re: U.S. physicists rally around plan to build fusion power plant

#228

Post by free_rms »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #223
free_rms wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cutting emissions by regulation is a continually losing battle. You can't tell people to live a lower-quality life and expect to win elections, and you'll have the combined lobbyists of a lot of different interests against you. It's actually more tractable to invent fusion than to try and win that battle long-term -- at least it's theoretically possible to make fusion work. And heck, if we could put some $ in pockets…

The established solution is you don't tell them right out, you just make it worse for most while ensuring there are a few success stories to distract with. See for instance: war on drugs, war on terror et. al.

Yeah, but those horrors made people rich. Cutting emissions makes nobody rich.

Developing fusion, carbon recapture schemes, we need to be thinking in terms of boondoggles that get the job done.

Re: U.S. physicists rally around plan to build fusion power plant

#229

Post by acidburnNSA »

Hasz wrote: post #49
tahoeskibum wrote: post #4

I think that solar/wind + battery (e.g. Tesla Megapack) will make fusion irrelevant.

No one is giving you numbers for why this is wrong, so let me ballpark. Typical solar irradiance is 1000W/m^2. Mean sunshine hours where I live is 3000hrs/y. Assuming 100% efficiency, 100% solar irradiance, perfect angle etc for those 3000hours, we get ~10^10J of energy. Those are bad assumptions, but very generous. In a gram of deuterium, per e=mc^2, we get ~10^12J. There is 100x more energy in a single gram of dete…

Also (too late to edit my previous comment), this assumes fusion converts all of the deuterium mass to energy, but actually it's only the change in nuclear binding energy between D + T and n + He-4, which is 17.6 MeV per reaction, or 2.8e-12 Joules (note minus sign). So this assessment above seems to be off by about a factor of 10^24, or 1 trillion trillion.

To get all the energy out of a deuteron, you need an anti-deuteron. This is dramatically less practical than thermonuclear fusion because we have no credible source of meaningful amounts of anti-matter fuel.

The linked ucsd page is pretty solid.

Re: U.S. physicists rally around plan to build fusion power plant

#230

Post by cbozeman »

wiml wrote: post #68
garmaine wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most of my life fusion has been perpetually 30 years away. Now it is only perpetually 20 years away. That's progress!

This graph often gets mentioned in the context of "always 30 years away": https://imgur.com/3vYLQmm It's not on "schedule" because we aren't putting the resources towards it.

Yeap. This is the real answer. I guarantee you, if every government of the world came together and everyone said, "Okay, we're all going to pitch in 1% of GDP until we crack this thing," we'd have nuclear fusion in under 10 years.

Turns out doing cutting edge science is expensive... Jesus Christ, who knew?!

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